There is a fairy stone on the top of Guo Hua Mountain on the seashore of Ole County, Dongsheng Shenzhou. One day, the fairy stone burst and became a stone monkey. This stone monkey is both sensitive and clever. He made friends with monkeys and found a good place to settle down in water curtain cave. The monkeys respectfully call the stone monkey the monkey king. The Monkey King traveled across the ocean alone to a fishing village to find a prescription for immortality.
He picked up clothes, stole shoes and hats, went to restaurants to drink and eat noodles, made many jokes and learned to be a man. After searching all the way, the Monkey King finally boarded the platform, and saw Bodhi's founder in the oblique moon. His father named him Monkey King.
2. Battle of Honghaier
There is a red Haier in the dry pine stream in the deep mountain. He is the son of Niu Wangmo and Princess Tiefan. He is good at magic, naughty and competitive. He is waiting for Tang Priest and his disciples to pass by, and he wants to honor his parents with Tang Priest's meat. Hon Hai 'er cheated the trust of Tang Priest with risks and took the opportunity to take Tang Priest into Huoyun Cave. Wukong and Bajie went to find the master, and Hon Hai 'er led a group of goblins, spitting fire, and Wukong and Bajie ran away.
3. Monkey King Thrice Defeats the Skeleton Demon
Tang Priest and his disciples went to Baihuling to get the scriptures. In Baihuling, there lived a corpse demon Bai Gujing. In order to eat the Tang Priest's flesh, he became a village girl and a woman, both of whom were caught by the Monkey King. Bai was afraid and turned into a gust of wind to flee. The Monkey King killed all the fake bodies of village girls and women. However, Tang Priest didn't distinguish between a shemale and a shemale, instead, he accused the Monkey King of killing people at will, even hurting the lives of mother and daughter, and violating the precepts. The third time, Bai became a white-haired old man and was caught by the Monkey King. Tang Priest wrote a derogatory book and drove the Monkey King back to Huaguoshan.
4. Collect pigs and eight quit
A strange thing happened in Gaolaozhuang: Miss Gao was taken away by the government, and the old man's wife cried all the way, which alarmed pig Wuneng who was sleeping in the grass. The old pig saved Miss Gao. Gao Laohan and his wife adopted Wu Neng as their son-in-law. At the party, Wuneng got drunk and showed his true colors, scaring away the guests. Miss Gao also refused to go to different rooms. Wuneng can only lock Miss Gao in the back garden and forbid her to see her parents and family.
Wukong and Master came to the villa to stay. Wukong found out the origin of Zhu with clever tricks. Zhu Yuan, a marshal, was sent to the lower bound for flirting with Chang 'e, threw a pig fetus by mistake, was enlightened by Guanyin, and waited for the Buddhist scriptures. Tang Priest accepted him as a disciple and named him Pig Bajie.
5. Gigi the Monkey King
On the way to learn Buddhist scriptures, the Tang Priest accidentally broke into Huang Paoguai's abode of fairies and immortals. Huang Paoguai's wife, Princess Baoxiang, was taken to Boyue Cave thirteen years ago. She quietly let go of Tang Priest and asked him to send a letter to her father. The three of them went to Baoxiang County. The king missed his daughter and begged Friar Sand to go up the mountain to subdue the demon.
They are no match for monsters. Friar Sand was caught and Bajie fled back to the inn. Huang Paoguai became a handsome husband, went to junior high school to meet his father-in-law, and used black magic to turn Tang Yan into a tiger in a cage. In order to save the master, Bai turned into a maid-in-waiting and waited for an opportunity to assassinate him, but he failed. He was injured himself and dived into the water. Pig came to Guo Hua and urged him to go back to see the Monkey King.
The Journey to the West is the first romance novel in ancient China. There are hundreds of The Journey to the West published in Ming Dynasty, and there is no author's signature. Wu et al., a scholar in Qing Dynasty, first proposed that The Journey to the West was written by Wu Cheng'en in Ming Dynasty.
This novel is based on the historical event of "Tang priest learning from the scriptures" and deeply depicts the social reality at that time through the author's artistic processing. The book mainly describes the story of the Monkey King's encounter with Tang Priest, Pig Bajie, Friar Sand after his birth, and his disturbance to the Heaven Palace. He went west to learn from the scriptures, demonized all the way, and after eighty-one difficulties, he finally arrived in the Western Heaven to meet the Tathagata Buddha, and finally the Five Saints died.
Since its publication, The Journey to the West has been widely circulated among the people, and various versions have emerged one after another. There are six editions in Ming Dynasty, seven editions and manuscripts in Qing Dynasty, and thirteen lost editions have been recorded in ancient books.
After the Opium War, a large number of China's classical literary works were translated into western languages, and The Journey to the West gradually spread to Europe and America, and was translated into English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, sign language, Swahili, Russian, Czech, Romanian, Polish, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese. Chinese and foreign scholars have published many research papers and monographs, which have given high evaluation to this novel.
The Journey to the West is a classic of China's ghost novels, reaching the peak of ancient romance novels, and is called the four classical novels of China together with The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, The Water Margin and A Dream of Red Mansions.
References:
Journey to the West-Baidu Encyclopedia